Yes it did. Making up variation of the same story in order to farm upvotes used to be done by humans.

But the strategy of throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks has now been industrialized with AI, because the machine can produce tons of cheaper, faster, smellier shit.

Socials are basically the perfect application for AI. Unreliable results are not a bug but a feature. You have humans helpfully training it for free by up or downvoting the result. And the AI companies get a machine trained to persuade large groups of people of any made-up story.